When The Past Comes Back To Bite
by Aprotny
Summary: Long ago, Chiro lost his family, including his little sister, in a fire. Now, the criminals who did it are back and determined to finish what they started. I do not own SRMTHFG.
1. Chapter 1

Chiro stormed out of the Super Robot angrily. He'd just had a fight with the Monkey Team and he wasn't happy at all.

He could hear Antauri calling him back, but chose to ignore him.

He walked to Mr. Gakslapper's hover burger stand and sat down.

"What's wrong, Chiro?" Mr. Gakslapper asked.

"I got into another fight with the Monkey Team." Chiro admitted.

"Again? That's the third time in as many days!" Mr. Gakslapper said.

Chiro sighed. "They… I don't know… they just don't understand what I need right now."

"Her birthday just passed, didn't it?" Mr. Gakslapper realized after a pause.

"She was so young…" Chiro murmured. "I tried to save her, but…"

"Chiro, don't blame yourself about that night. You almost died as well. It's not your fault, so don't act like it is." Mr. Gakslapper scolded.

Chiro sighed again. "I didn't manage to get out that day to grieve her. The monkeys stopped me because it was time for training. I… I took it out on them."

Mr. Gakslapper put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "It's okay to mourn, Chiro, but it's not okay to take it out on your friends."

Chiro cracked a small smile. "You sound like Antauri now. I'd better get back before they start worrying about me." He turned to leave.

"Chiro. One more thing." Mr. Gakslapper said. Chiro turned back. "She'll always be with you. In your heart."

Chiro gave a real smile this time. "Thanks, Mr. Gakslapper. It means a lot to me."

"Any time, Chiro. Just…" Mr. Gakslapper's eyes widened.

"What is it?" Chiro just managed to ask before being snatched from behind and yanked into a car.

Mr. Gakslapper raced after it, but the car was faster than he was.

Everyone who'd seen the event was shocked at what had just happened.

A little girl was the first to snap out of it, and she ran towards the park.


	2. Chapter 2

"I still don't think we should've let the kid leave the robot." Sprx grumbled.

"Come on, Sprx. We need to give Chiro some freedom." Nova argued. "Especially when he's mad at us."

"As I recall, this all started for that very reason." Antauri recounted.

"Why'd he get so mad at us that day, anyway?" Gibson questioned. "He knows the training schedule."

"He's been pretty mad at us lately." Nova said. "I wonder what's wrong."

"We can't push him to tell us." Antauri told her. "He'll explain when he's ready."

"Hey! Someone's coming!" Otto called, grabbing the team's attention.

"Who is it?" Nova asked.

"It looks like a little girl, and she seems freaked out about something." Gibson observed.

"Monkey Team!" The little girl yelled. "I need to tell you something!"

The Monkey Team exchanged glances and went down to meet her.

"What is it?" Antauri asked softly, sensing it wasn't something good.

"It's Chiro!" The little girl cried. "He was taken right out from under us! Kidnapped!"

The Monkey Team gasped.

"What?" Nova yelped.

"It's true! I saw it happen! They yanked him into a car and drove off!" The girl said.

Antauri struggled to stay calm. "Thank you for telling us. We'll take care of it."

The girl nodded and left.

"We can track his signal with the com receptors." Gibson suggested.

"Don't you think they would've thought of that, Brain Strain?" Sprx snapped.

"No need to be mean, Sprx." Antauri scolded. "We're all worried for Chiro."

"Do you think he'll be okay?" Nova asked.

"For now, I sense he is all right." Antauri responded. "But we must find him before something really bad happens."


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Chiro heard as he began to come to was voices.

"The boss will be pleased with our catch." One said.

"Let's hope he doesn't escape before we get there." Another responded. "It was luck that helped us capture him."

"I think he's waking up." A third called.

"Quick! Knock him out!" The first ordered.

Chiro felt his mouth being covered by a cloth. A few deep breaths and he was unconscious once more.

When he next awoke, a fourth person was in the middle of speaking.

"… cell we prepared for him. I don't want him escaping."

Chiro squirmed.

"He's awake!" A fifth person yelped.

Chiro opened his eyes and quickly located the exit. He struggled until he was dropped and then ran, but someone stuck a leg out and tripped him.

That same person grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back while applying pressure to his torso, forcing him to stay put.

"Hello, Chiro." The fourth person snickered. "How nice of you to join us."

Chiro twisted his head around to see who was speaking. The look in his eyes went from frustration to shock to anger. "You!"

This was the man who had killed his family. He remembered that night vividly.

_A 7-year-old Chiro sees a strange man in the house while going to get a cup of water. The man is setting up dynamite._

"_Who are you?" Chiro asks._

_The man grins. "Your worst nightmare." He lights the dynamite and runs._

_Chiro tries to stop the fire by slamming his hand down on it, but only succeeds in burning himself._

"_Ow!" He cries. The dynamite explodes, throwing him backwards and knocking him out._

_When he wakes up, he's surrounded by fire. Coughing, he runs to his little sister's room._

"_Amy! Wake up!" He yells, shaking her._

"_Five more minutes…" Amy murmurs._

_Chiro lifts her onto his back and runs for the door._

_There's a gunshot. Amy's eyes go wide._

"_Chiro…" She whispers before giving her last breath of life._

"_Amy! No!" Chiro screams._

"_I will let no one in this household live." It was the man from before who held the gun. "None of you will escape my wrath."_

_He shoots Chiro and leaves._

_The man didn't succeed in his goal that night. Chiro lived, saved by the firemen._

_However, he was the only one._

Chiro clenched his teeth. "What do you want?"

"I want you to die, child." The man sniggered. "But not by gunshot. No, it's too late for that. You will die by torture." Chiro gulped. "Take him to the torture chamber and use on him whichever mechanisms you please."

Chiro was pulled out of the room and down several hallways to another room containing all sorts of torture mechanisms. Chiro struggled like mad.

"Where should we begin?" The man holding him grinned.

"Let's stretch him!" Someone suggested. Everyone except Chiro agreed.

The teen was locked into the stretchy thingy and stretched until long after he started screaming in pain.

The session ended when Chiro's captors realized the boy had passed out.

"We'll continue this tomorrow." One ordered. "Take him to his cell."

"Yes sir." The others replied and dragged poor Chiro away.


	4. Chapter 4

Antauri could sense Chiro's pain and was worried sick about him. "Monkey Team, report."

"No sign of him, Antauri." Nova responded. "Gibson and I have searched sectors 1 through 4 thoroughly."

"Otto and I have had no luck either." Sprx answered. "He's nowhere in sectors 5 through 8."

"There's no indication of him being in sectors 9 through 11 either." Antauri sighed.

"Where's Jinmay?" Otto asked. "She said she'd help look."

"She's somewhere. She wouldn't procrastinate when Chiro's in danger." Antauri replied.

**Meanwhile…**

Jinmay flew through the abandoned wasteland that was called the Zone of Wasted Years. She was following her instincts. She knew Chiro was there somewhere, but the Zone of Wasted Years was a large place and it would take a while to search, so she figured it would be better she start sooner rather than later.

"Hang in there, Chiro." She whispered. "I'm coming for you."


	5. Chapter 5

Days stretched into weeks as the torture continued. Chiro began to lose all hope of being rescued. He would just sit in his cell between sessions, his will broken.

One day, he heard his captors talking outside his cell.

"The Monkey Team has started searching the Zone of Wasted Years, sir."

"Then we'll move farther away from the city."

"Wouldn't that increase our chances of being found?"

"You dare question my orders? Grab the boy and take him to the helicopters. We'll fly high in the clouds so that we won't be seen."

Chiro was surprised at what had just been said, but he didn't have time to ponder it. His captors came in, picked him up (He was too weak to walk by now) and took him to the launch pad.

The helicopter was soon loaded and ready to go. Chiro hadn't been tied up. They knew he was too scared of them to attempt an escape.

The helicopter lifted off, and, just as Chiro's last sliver of hope faded away, there was a huge explosion and Chiro's captors started running around yelling something about going down.

Chiro didn't care. It meant less torture if he died now.

Something burst through the side of the helicopter. The men gathered in front of Chiro, blocking his view of it, even though he was barely paying attention. They were easily knocked aside.

"Don't let her take the boy!" The boss shouted.

'Her?' Chiro didn't have time to even look up before he found himself out in the fresh air, being held by someone.

He watched as the helicopter hit the ground and exploded.

"They'll see that for miles around." Chiro's savior mumbled. Chiro turned and found himself looking into Jinmay's eyes. "Let's go home, okay?"

Chiro nodded and hugged her as they started towards Shuggazoom City.


	6. Chapter 6

"Monkey Team, a helicopter just went down in the Zone of Wasted Years." Gibson reported.

"We'd better help them, although what they're doing in the Zone of Wasted Years is beyond me." Antauri said.

They arrived at the scene to find men helping each other out of the wreck.

"Do you need help?" Nova asked.

The men looked up in surprise. "The hyper force? What are _you_ doing out here?"

"We could ask you the same question." Nova replied with hands on hips.

"Who did this to you?" Sprx asked.

"I know it sounds weird, but it was a flying girl with metal skin." One of the men responded. "She had pink hair and she stole something that meant a lot to our research."

"Research?" Nova raised an eyebrow, trying to ignore the fact that they had just described Jinmay.

"Yes. We're out here conducting research on the few species that live in the Zone of Wasted Years." Another said. "So far it's been very successful."

"We can take you back to Shuggazoom City, if you'd like." Antauri offered. "It's the least we could do, seeing as your helicopter was shot down."

"Um… no thank you. We're fine out here." A third man answered hesitantly.

"Then at least let us treat your wounds." Gibson insisted. "Some of them look very bad."

The men looked at each other and shrugged. They had nothing to hide anymore, and they would make sure to show their best manners so that they would appear to be kind and innocent people.

**Meanwhile…**

Jinmay stopped to take a break behind a sand dune at the halfway mark. She placed Chiro, who had passed out an hour ago, down gently and examined him, noting his wounds and how thin he was.

"Oh Chiro." She sighed. "What did they do to you?"

Chiro struggled to open his eyes but failed.

Jinmay realized he was sick. "No more time for resting. I need to get you back to the Super Robot fast." She activated her communicator. "Jinmay to Monkey Team. Monkey Team, come in."

"Hello, Jinmay. It seems you've been busy." Nova answered. "We just met the victims of the helicopter you shot down."

"What?" Jinmay was confused for a moment. Then, she remembered she had saved Chiro from a helicopter that then crashed. She felt a little mad that the Monkey Team was helping the people who had hurt Chiro. "What's it to you?"

"You hurt some innocent researchers!" Nova replied.

"Researchers? What are you talking about?" Jinmay asked.

"That's what they said they were doing, researching the creatures that live out here." Nova informed her.

"Whatever. I'll meet you in Shuggazoom City. We'll talk about this more then." Jinmay shut off her communicator. "Come on, Chiro. Let's go."

She picked up her boyfriend and set off again.


	7. Chapter 7

Nova paced back and forth in the Command Center. They'd gone back to Shuggazoom City but Jinmay still hadn't showed up.

"_I_ should be the one pacing. She destroyed _my_ helicopter." The leader of the men they'd helped, now identified as Jose, had agreed to come along. He had said it was because he wanted to have a word with Jinmay, but it was really because he wanted to finish off Chiro.

Jinmay shot up the tube and eyed Jose viciously, immediately glad she had left Chiro downstairs. "What's _he_ doing here?"

"He wanted to have a word with you after you made rubble out of his helicopter." Sprx replied.

"You stole something valuable to me." Jose growled. "I want it back."

"What, so you can kill him? Dream on! You've done enough damage as it is!" Jinmay shouted.

"I believe we should go about this in a civilized manner instead of yelling." Antauri interrupted. "Jinmay, please sit down."

"I have to go check on something first." Jinmay said.

"I believe I just told you to sit down, not to go check on something and then sit down." Antauri responded. "Nova, you should sit down too."

Jinmay gave a huff. "I'll stay, but I'm standing."

Jose stood up. "Then I'm standing too."

"Fine." Antauri said. "Jose, tell Jinmay what you're accusing her of."

"I was conducting research, as usual, flying up in my helicopter where I can see better, when suddenly, this girl breaks into my helicopter and steals one of my research tools! Then, the helicopter crashed, no thanks to her!" Jose scowled at Jinmay.

Jinmay clapped sarcastically. "What a beautiful lie, Jerk. Now let me explain why you were really in that helicopter. You were trying to get away from the Monkey Team so that they wouldn't find you and your prisoner. I simply rescued him because he needed rescuing."

"If that's true, than where, pray tell, is that prisoner now?" Jose retorted.

"At home. Where else?" Jinmay replied calmly. "I'll be going to check on that something now." She stepped into Chiro's tube and slid back down it, heading to where she'd left Chiro.

"Jinmay! You can't just leave in the middle of this!" Nova yelled after her. She turned to her team. "I'm going to find out just what she's talking about. Be back in a bit." She slid down her tube and followed Jinmay.

She found her knelt next to someone in the foot of the robot and decided just to watch.

The other person began to stir.

"We're in the robot now." Jinmay whispered. "But your captor's here too. I need you to hide down here while I sort this out."

She turned to go, but the other person grabbed her arm.

"No! What if he finds me while you're not here? He'll kill me!" Nova recognized Chiro's voice, but he sounded weak.

She gasped, giving herself away.

"Who is it? Who's there?" Jinmay shouted. "Show yourself!"

Nova sighed and stepped into view. "I'm sorry I was suspected you, Jinmay. I… didn't know."

"That man, or at least his henchmen, hurt Chiro." Jinmay explained. "We can't let him find him."

"I'm with you now. Go back up to argue your case. I'll stay with Chiro." Nova said.

"Are you sure?" Jinmay hesitated.

Nova nodded. "I'm sure."

Jinmay turned to Chiro. "You okay with this?"

Chiro agreed. "I just don't want to be alone and I don't want to be near _him_."

"Keep a close eye on Chiro and your surroundings." Jinmay told Nova. "Don't let your guard down for even a second."

"Right!" Nova replied. "You can count on me!" Jinmay went upstairs. "Will you be okay, Chiro?"

"Jinmay says I have a fever and I really don't feel good at all." Chiro responded. "Jinmay was going to take me straight to the Sick Bay, but she wanted to check if any of my captors were here first. I thought it was silly, but now I'm glad she did."

"Me too." Nova said. "She really likes to look out for you, you know that?" Chiro smiled and nodded. "So, what did they do to you?"

Chiro winced. "I'd rather not talk about it." He looked away. "They hurt me."

Sprx contacted Nova via communicator. "Nova, where are you? Jinmay's back and she says she's going to tell us what's going on."

"Keep the lines open. I can't come up there right now, but I want to listen in." Nova replied.

"Um… okay. If you say so." Sprx responded.

**Upstairs…**

"So what do you have to tell us, Jinmay?" Otto asked.

"It's about _that_ criminal!" Jinmay replied.

"I am not a criminal!" Jose argued.

"Tell that to the people you killed." Jinmay snapped. "Seven years ago, that jerk set up dynamite in the mayor's house and shot the mayor's children when they tried to escape. Only one of them survived the shooting and fire. He was kidnapped recently and tortured half to death. It was him I supposedly 'stole' from that helicopter. I call it 'rescued'. He told me all this as we were flying back to Shuggazoom City."

"And where is he now?" Gibson questioned.

"Hiding from his captor, obviously." Jinmay answered.

"Is this true, Jose?" Antauri asked.

"Of course not! The girl's making it all up!" Jose growled, glaring at Jinmay.

"I don't know. Sounds pretty realistic to me." Chiro spoke feebly into Nova's communicator, surprising them all.

"Nova, you're with Chiro?" Gibson gasped.

"Yeah, what of it?" Nova replied. "I'll tell you where we are as soon as Jose is sent to the outer-world prison."

"We don't have proof from either side." Antauri pointed out. "We can't do anything of the sort without evidence."

"Why don't you both come up here?" Gibson asked. "We can discuss this better if we're in the same room as each other."

"No way! Jinmay said to stay here!" Nova responded. "Besides, Chiro refuses to go anywhere near him!"

"This will be difficult." Antauri sighed.

"Um… Where'd Jose go?" Otto asked.

Everyone froze.

"Nova, keep your eyes open!" Jinmay yelled into the communicator.

Nova did, but nothing prepared her for the speed at which Jose attacked Chiro. He swooped in with a knife that scraped across Chiro's back. If the teen hadn't turned and ducked, it would've gone straight into his heart.

Jose prepared to strike again, but Nova knocked him out of the way, catching the knife as it fell. She broke the weapon in half and threw it away.

The cut was deep in Chiro's back. He began to see double.

As Nova fought off Jose, keeping him from finishing the job, she saw Chiro collapse out of the corner of her eye. No! She couldn't let her guard down for an instant! She kept fighting.

Jinmay raced around the corner with the rest of the Monkey Team following.

"Chiro!" She cried, and rushed to her boyfriend's side.

Chiro opened his eyes weakly and then closed them again.

"Jinmay, Otto, Gibson, take him to Med Bay and treat him! The rest of us will handle Jose!" Antauri commanded.

Jinmay heaved Chiro onto her back. There was no time to lose.


	8. Chapter 8

Jinmay placed Chiro gently on the Med Bay table. Gibson examined the teen carefully.

"He has several bad injuries that I can help with, but I think the trauma of all this is the worst part. It might take a little bit to get over it." Gibson said.

Chiro moaned quietly, obviously unconscious.

"Well, get started already! We don't have all day!" Jinmay snapped.

Gibson got to work, having Otto help with many things, while Jinmay held Chiro's hand and whispered comforting words to him.

Things would be better soon.

**Meanwhile…**

Nova, Sprx, and Antauri had succeeded in defeating Jose. They locked him up and Sprx and Antauri hurried to the Med Bay, leaving Nova to keep an eye on him.

They found Gibson placing the last bandage on Chiro.

"Will he be all right?" Nova asked.

"Physically, yes. Mentally, I have no clue." Gibson replied. "He's asleep now. You're welcome to stay here with him. Just don't crowd him when he wakes up."

"No worries, Brain Strain. We'll be careful." Sprx assured him.

Gibson fought down the urge to argue, and said instead. "I'm going to get a cool cloth. Stay here and watch over him."

He left and returned a few minutes later with a wet cloth and a bucket full of cold water. He placed the cloth on Chiro's head and the bucket on the floor next to the bed and walked over to the cabinet to get some medicine.

Nova raced into the Med Bay. "Jose escaped! He knocked me aside and ran away!"

"Nova, Sprx, go check if he left the robot." Antauri ordered. "If he did, go make sure he hasn't hurt anyone and find him. We need to put him under lock and key as soon as possible. The rest of us will keep our guard up and make sure he doesn't hurt Chiro."

The team soon found out that Jose _had_ left the robot and caused quite a ruckus in the city but managed to get away somehow. There was no sign of him for months after that. Time used to heal Chiro.


	9. Chapter 9

Chiro knelt by the ashes of the place that had once been his home. Now, it was a memorial for his family and all that they had given to the community.

He placed some flowers by what had once been the doorstep.

He fought back the tears until he realized he was alone. Then, he let them flow freely.

Poor little Amy. She hadn't deserved this. Nobody could possibly deserve this.

A metal hand touched his shoulder a few minutes later. It was Antauri.

"Chiro, we were worried about you." The silver monkey told him. Then, seeing that the teen was crying, he added. "Would you like to talk about it?"

Chiro looked into Antauri's eyes and saw nothing but concern. He hugged the monkey and sobbed into his shoulder.

"Amy…" He cried. "Oh, Amy…"

"Chiro, if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I'm here for you." Antauri said softly. Chiro nodded. "Someday, that Jose will be sorry for what he's done. We can only hope that day comes soon."


End file.
